The Annual Cochrane Pilgrimage…my first one ever!

In this blog-post, Rebecca John, Research Scientist at the South Asian Cochrane Centre, recounts her experiences of organizing and participating in The 22^nd Cochrane Colloquium held at Hyderabad, India.

Rebecca John (holding bouquet) at the closing ceremony of the 22nd Cochrane Colloquium. 
Rebecca is flanked on her right (farthest to nearest) by Ajay Tripathy, Prathap Tharyan and Anna Joseph; and on her left by Jabez Paul Barnabas, Richard Kirubakaran, Venkatesh Parthasarathy, and Samuel Victor

Where it all began for me:

It was a little over a year ago that I responded to an advertisement for the post of Research Scientist for the Effective Health Care Research Consortium that was published by the South Asian Cochrane Network and Centre (SASIANCC), hosted at the Professor BV Moses Centre for Evidence-Informed Health Care and Health Policy at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India. Dr Prathap Tharyan, the Director of the Centre, was by no means a stranger and having sat through many sessions by him during my Public Health course, I was eager to step into the world of ‘Cochrane’! 

One of the first conversations I recall having with Dr Prathap after applying for the job (and before actually being selected), was of him telling me about this ‘great’ event called the Colloquium coming up the following year and that the SASIANCC would be hosting it. He went on to say, “If you get the job, you would be required to spend about 10 days in Hyderabad in September 2014.” I can still remember thinking to myself, “I have no idea what a ‘Colloquium’ is!”; and “I am going to have to leave my kids, but I've never been away from them for so long!”

My next stop: laptop….googled the word ‘Colloquium’ and consulted  Wikipedia, my trusted fount of knowledge, so I now knew what a Colloquium was. I eventually found my way to the 21^st Colloquium website, saw a lot of photos online from the Quebec Colloquium, heard stories from colleagues who has been there, and thought to myself, “This looks like a whole lot of fun!”

The actual experience:

The first step towards gearing up for the 22^nd Cochrane Colloquium was a trip by the SASIANCC team to Hyderabad in October 2013 to look at the venue in more detail and also to find the best possible accommodation for varying budgets. After the trip, each of the team members was allocated a role as part of the local organising committee. I was given the task of helping out with registration and accommodation. A bit daunting at first, but with the help and support of other team members it turned out to be a great experience!

With the start of registration on 3^rd of March 2014, it was like the floodgates had opened…we had the usually starting hiccups but within in a few days we were all working together and had things up and running like a well-oiled machine !

***

The last two weeks….Before we knew it September had crept upon us and the mood at SASIANCC was something similar to that at Santa’s residence the night before Christmas! Everyone was hard at the tasks assigned to them; with no time for chit chat or even coffee breaks. We all had but one goal in mind and that was to make the 22^nd Cochrane Colloquium a memorable one for ALL our delegates.

My personal highlights:

On a personal note, it being my first Colloquium ever… was that it was a memorable one. It started off with the Evidence Aid Symposium, and an opportunity to finally meet up with many of the lovely people I had been emailing over the past few months.  By the end of the third day I guess the Cochrane Colloquium spirit just took hold; meeting up over coffee or lunch with people from various centres and groups was all too exciting!!

Rebecca with Jini Hetherington
(Also in the picture are Ruban Das, and Anna Joseph
(partly hidden behind Jini).

From a professional point, it was really great to meet people who have been involved with Cochrane in various capacities; some newcomers like me, and some who had been giving of their time and talents to the Collaboration for decades.

What struck me most was that Cochrane is all about networking, and in reality Cochrane is truly a ‘Collaboration’ of people who are NOT trying to getting ahead of others (like so many other professional bodies!!) but of those trying to work across geographical and cultural borders for ‘Trusted evidence, Informed decisions & Better health'.

The 2^nd Annual Cochrane Lecture ‘Evidence-based Medicine and The Cochrane Collaboration: a McMaster perspective’ delivered by Professor Gordon Guyatt was in all senses the highlight for me. Prof Guyatt kept the delegates not only engaged but thoroughly interested for a whole hour.

Looking back:

Now looking back it seems like a dream.. and all too soon the curtains fell on the 22^nd Cochrane Colloquium... with a thrilling Bollywood Dance-off (where I put on my dancing shoes after a break of 20-odd years!) serving as a fitting finale. But, while it felt so good, I also felt a sadness come over me as it was time to say goodbye to the many lovely people I had met.

On a positive note, I walked away inspired, enthused and motivated to strive harder to ensure that the ‘Not just evidence but the right evidence’ gets out there!

Auf Wiedersehen & Wir sehen uns in Wien !!

Rebecca John

(E-mail:rebeccajoyce7@gmail.com) 

NB: Readers may wish to also read a publication co-authored by Rebecca and based on a poster presented at the 22nd Cochrane Colloquium: 

Representation of women as editors in the Cochrane Collaboration published in the Journal of Evidence Based Medicine (doi:10.1111/jebm.12123).

Prathap Tharyan

Our Cochrane Hyderabad Story

This blog-post was submitted by: Tarun George- with Anand Viswanathan, Samuel Kamalesh Kumar, Donae Elizabeth, and Riya Mathew from the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India, and recounts their experiences at the recently concluded 22^nd Cochrane Colloquium held at the Hyderabad international Convention Centre.

The authors at the Colloquium

An internal medicine physician, a psychiatrist, two physical medicine & rehabilitation professionals, a primary care physician working in rural India, and a final year medical student from a government college independently decided to attend the week-long Cochrane Colloquium in Hyderabad from 20-27 September 2014.  

We all had different reasons for it varying from scepticism, plain curiosity and a deep desire to become part of the Evidence-Informed Health Care movement. The differences notwithstanding, this was an eye-opening experience for all of us. Many of us discovered that Cochrane was not just about systematic reviews, but that its core thrust was to promote people-centric quality research by critically appraising all available evidence and contextualizing it to inform health decisions relevant to the patient in front of us and to achieve better health outcomes.

The Colloquium

The Cochrane Colloquium was a global forum attended by about 600-650 people from different parts of the world, with varying backgrounds and skill sets, at different stages of knowledge generation and delivery. The common denominator, though, was ‘moving forward’. 

Everyone was supportive, and always willing to help. We met people from a myriad of fields -statisticians, librarians, researchers, medical students, public health officials, nurses, physical & occupational therapists, traditional medicine practitioners and clinicians.  At the newcomer’s session we discovered that everyone had a unique story on how they became part of this network. We built many lines of contact and made numerous friends.

Pre-Colloquium Workshops

At the pre-conference workshops we tweaked our skills at getting the evidence right. Renowned names from the publishing world sensitized us on the peer-review process, and on what the editors look for in a journal submission. We were educated about the approaches to systematic reviews, and that in order to conduct sound secondary research one has to be reasonably adept in understanding primary research- sample size calculation, assessing risk of bias, study design methods etc., and to carefully interpreting results.

Plenary Sessions

The plenary sessions predominantly focused on how to achieve better public health outcomes and to build capacity. We were given insights into the complexity of health systems especially in low- and middle-income countries. Many speakers concurred on the need for a concerted effort from all the stakeholders- that includes lay people, the ground level health-workers, the researchers and the policy makers at the top. Only then we would be able to gather appropriate evidence in the right way, make informed decisions,and channel our scarce resources to achieve the best possible healthcare for all.

The Big-Bang Ending

The Colloquium concluded with a magnificent gala dinner where delegates participated in a Bollywood dance-off, and some of us shook our tail feathers! We departed over the weekend with resolves for ourselves and for our institutions.

So what did we take back from the colloquium?

This is a consolidated synopsis arrived at over a cup of chai at the Charminar.

We resolved that we need to: 

At Charminar

• Go back to being students! 
• Strengthen our desire to search for answers that we don't have 
• Ask the right patient-centric questions 
• Build skills and a support system to acquire the right information 
• Use the resources in The Cochrane Library 
• Possibly get involved in doing systematic reviews sometime in future 
• Work towards “effective healthcare for all” with optimal utilization of   resources.

Capacity-building begins at home:

Capacity building at all levels is necessary, but we could start from home, by strategically empowering people like you and me in this vast web of health-care. The first step would be to meet periodically in informal gatherings, discuss how to go about achieving these goals and get the rest of our community involved - from the librarian to the clinician.

Hoping to meet some of you at the next Cochrane EBM forum and take things from there. 

A lot can happen over a cup of tea:

Check out this audio-visual journey through the Colloquium at Hyderabad: https://plus.google.com/114173190429243379669/stories/3187f869-e6fc-3d01-b605-f1e89c8a6601148ba39af2c?authkey=CKqB0oGelOTdZw

Tarun George- with Anand Viswanathan, Samuel Kamalesh Kumar, Donae Elizabeth, and Riya Mathew 

NB: I invite other participants at the 2014 Cochrane Colloquium to share their experiences, reflections or comments to build on the tremendous enthusiasm evident at Hyderabad. Please send you submission to prathap@cmcvellore.ac.in or to cochrane@cmcvellore.ac.in  

To find out more about what happened at Hyderabad, visit: http://www.cochrane.org/features/2014-cochrane-colloquium or https://colloquium.cochrane.org/

Prathap Tharyan